A new study has found that Australian marketers know the importance of content marketing, but 57 per cent say producing high quality content is a key obstacle to their success.

HubSpot and Survey Monkey’s inaugural Asia Pacific Content Marketing Report, which surveyed more than 720 marketers in the Asia Pacific Region, revealed content marketing has the biggest commercial impact on incremental leads and sales.

However, ‘content shock’, the situation where there is more content being created than consumed, is having a negative impact on their success. While the majority of those surveyed know the answer is to do content marketing well, 70 per cent believe their use of content is limited, inconsistent or basic. 

“There are a range of challenges in the development of great content,” said Ryan Bonnici, HubSpot’s Director of Marketing in Asia Pacific. “But the issue is that the more content businesses produce, the more competitive the market becomes, and suddenly the target audience sees individual business content as less valuable than before, 

“However, this glut of content marketing provides opportunities for businesses to stand out, if they can implement the right strategy. With most of the market feeling overwhelmed by the challenges of content marketing, those that are successful will find themselves in the top quarter of marketers in Asia Pacific.”

The research reaffirms the success of content marketing, finding there is an advantage for the marketers who can craft high quality content and optimise its promotion, rather than focusing on increasing the volume of assets being created. In this case, less is more if it is done well. 

The report found marketers are increasing their investment in content marketing in order to improve the quality of output, with 28 per cent employing new talent expressly for content creation and promotion, while another 21 per cent increased spending on agency resources.

The report, which is available here, is based on data from APAC’s foremost marketers and sales people. Other key takeaways include: 

• 73 per cent of companies with advanced or optimised content marketing had a defined strategy in place for output. However, 54 per cent said they lack any content marketing strategy at all.
• 47 per cent said blog posts are the most effective type of content marketing.
• Although many reported using content planning techniques such as buyer personas, journey mapping and editorial calendars, 76 per cent rated their capabilities with these techniques as basic or medium.

Further, marketers that get content right have an incredible opportunity ahead of them, with sizable impacts on business growth and demand generation. The key is to upskill in creating high quality content that aligns to a core marketing insight. 

“While content creation comes with its own challenges, the report shows that the key tenants of any marketing strategy still reign supreme: having a plan, investing in the process and amplifying it through paid media,” Bonnici said.

“By using this report as a benchmark, marketers across Australia can gauge how their own content marketing is tracking, where it needs to be improved and what tools can help them get the most out of their activities.”